


Shards and Fragments

by Domenika Marzione (domarzione)



Series: Qui Habitat [12]
Category: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1
Genre: Gen, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-06-10
Updated: 2009-06-10
Packaged: 2020-04-23 13:38:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19152130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/domarzione/pseuds/Domenika%20Marzione
Summary: Bits and bobs from throughout the series, in no particular order(1) Making Do [Rodney]: Atlantis has long had a list of what they could, if necessary, produce locally instead of getting from Earth. It had been mostly theoretical until it wasn't.(2) Life on Mars [Elizabeth]: It's not easy going from research outpost to colonialist empire.(3) A For Alpha [John]: Atlantis getting its Alpha Company is the punchline to a longstanding joke, but it's no longer funny.(4) Absit Omen [Reletti]: A battlefield commission.





	1. RMA

Sheppard has professional skills that make finding Rodney very easy, but the truth of it is that he rarely comes down to Science to do so, despite it being the place Rodney spends all of his time in Atlantis not eating or sleeping. Sheppard's much more likely to find Rodney in the commissary or walking in the hallway en route to somewhere or in the control room or any number of other places that would seem to require excellent timing or fortuitous luck and thus add an air of casualness to the encounters... if you didn't know Sheppard, for whom 'casual' is a default setting as far as appearances go and is rarely a true indicator of what's going on beneath the surface.

All of which is why Rodney's antennae are up the moment Sheppard falls into step with him as he leaves Medical to head back to his lab.

"You got some time this afternoon?" Sheppard asks, nothing in his tone indicating its level of urgency. Which doesn't mean it isn't urgent.

"For what?" Rodney replies, since the answer is really 'no,' but can perhaps be flexible if it's something minor and not an impromptu off-world mission.

"Confab," Sheppard says.

Rodney stops walking and gives Sheppard a look because, really, a _meeting_? Sheppard doesn't do meetings. He has to be dragged to command staff gatherings by Lorne and is always the first to assure Elizabeth that they don't really need to get together to discuss something when email is perfectly effective in this situation despite the fact that he's not awesome at email, either.

"Bring Zelenka," Sheppard tells him, ignoring Rodney's incredulous expression. "Lorne's office, 1600."

Rodney's about to ask for more details - what's the point of a meeting if he doesn't know what they're meeting about? - but then someone calls for Sheppard from the end of the hallway and he turns to go before Rodney can stop him.

"We've been invited to Little Tripoli," Rodney tells Radek as he enters their office. Once upon a time, they rarely used this space - it was one of the reasons they opted to share and the big reason why they chose to share this cramped room so far from their actual workspaces. But that was before there were Ori and before the Science Division morphed from pure research arm to a cross between a university and the Pegasus equivalent of BASF (without the Zyklon-B) and the bureaucratic work expanded proportionately. "I don't know why."

It could be any of a dozen reasons. Their respective subordinates spend a lot of time ordering and being ordered around by the other and the resulting tensions don't always simmer down on their own. There are many checkpoints and chokepoints before those problems reach even Zelenka's and Lorne's level (and Rodney is under no illusion that those two aren't working on their own to avoid involving their bosses) but that doesn't mean something hasn't flared on the military side and Sheppard wants to (or needs to) deal with it promptly.

Radek stops typing and pushes his glasses up his nose. "The MTF," he says. "They're going to ask us to do something with it."

Rodney stops. "Are you guessing or are you reading an email from Lorne?"

"I have no email from Major Lorne, which is why it is going to be the MTF," Radek explains. He's probably rolling his eyes, but the glare from the overhead light is reflecting off of his glasses and Rodney can't tell. "We have been dissatisfied with the MTF. They have been dissatisfied with the MTF. Nothing has blown up in the city this morning and Doctor Weir has not sent us any emails about 'interdepartmental tensions.' There are not many other things it could be."

The Munitions Task Force has been around since before the Ori invaded Earth. Rodney is the nominal head of it, but most of the day-to-day work is handled by Bolsano. Who isn't falling down on the job, just being somewhat hamstrung by the fact that nobody's really thought about what the MTF's supposed to do besides figure out how to make sure the Atlantis military doesn't run out of firepower. Which, since the marines have gotten good at making their own bullets, has pretty much been all about gunpowder refinement and retooling Wraith and the occasional Ancient weapons.

With no better counter-suggestion, Rodney sighs agreement and sits down, mentally reblocking his afternoon to accommodate Sheppard's request. He sends an email to Tarashkova telling her he'll have to come by to see the results of her modeling tomorrow morning. He was supposed to check in with three different projects today, but Tarashkova's is the only one that's entirely on the computer and so it can wait.

A new email pops up, from Radek, who is all of five feet away. They do this, sending each other IMs and emails when they're in the same room. They've done it sitting next to each other at meetings, to Elizabeth's displeasure and Sheppard's amusement.

"Read the Robotics summaries," the email says and attached to it are the relevant documents. Robotics is the big thing as far as Little Tripoli goes; the military people look at robots as a way to make up the differences in numbers between them and the Ori and as a less-precious resource than the men who cannot be replaced. The military people aren't wrong -- although they are constantly and conveniently underestimating how dear the robots are when not compared to flesh-and-bone people -- but it's a constant battle with them to get them to see that there is more to what Science and the MTF can offer than just new and better and tinier robots. The MTF was supposed to help bridge that understanding gap -- it came about after they stumbled upon a Wraith outpost with Ancient weapons -- but lacking momentum, it has not. Which is why Rodney has to read the Robotics summaries.

Rodney has never really liked going to Little Tripoli. It reminds him of the long walk down to the gym class locker room back when he had much to fear from muscle-bound young men with tendencies toward violence and a vested concern in the pecking order. Intellectually, of course, this is nothing like that. Little Tripoli has gyms and firing ranges, of course, but it also has classrooms and computer labs and offices with bad wall art and bulletin boards with outdated and irrelevant posters. It is, point of fact, more like the Mountain than any other part of Atlantis.

"So what do you want to talk about?" Rodney asks as they enter Lorne's office.

Sheppard is slouching at the conference table, eyes on his laptop, but he looks up even if he doesn't sit up.

"Toys," Sheppard says, waiting for Lorne to come out from behind his desk and join them at the table. Lorne, of course, does not bring his laptop. Lorne is a Luddite who not only does not share Sheppard's childlike glee with new prototypes, but also easily hands off any kind of tech project work to the nearest convenient person in uniform.

That said, Lorne has read the Robotics summaries -- maybe Zelenka BCC'ed him on the email; it wouldn't be the first time -- and if he's not entranced by the wonders, he's at least practical with respect to the more mundane aspects. Which Sheppard (among others) is not in the slightest.

"Which of these can you produce in bulk?" Lorne asks. "And what has to be done to expand the list?"

Once upon a time, before the Ori, before the _Daedalus_ , Science Division started what became known as the Swiss Family Robinson Crusoe List. The SFRCL is the big file of what Earth tech can be replicated in Atlantis using only what is to hand. It was started as a joke -- everyone knew that they'd really never need to develop their own microchip processing facility -- but it was always played straight. There were no magic steps in the processes, no hand-waving abracadabra elements that relied on incredible luck or incredible gullibility or 'and then the Ancient appeared and initialized the machine' moments. Over the years, the list has grown and been refined to reflect Atlantis's evolving capabilities and resources and, on occasion, actually been put into use -- before the Ori, it was usually when the _Daedalus_ was running late. By the time the Ori were upgraded from annoyance to major threat, the SFRCL was a practical guide that was expanded with an eye toward actually needing to rely on it more frequently. By the time Earth fell, Science Division was giving the _Daedalus_ wishlists of what to steal so that the SFRCL could be implemented on a daily basis. Which is why Atlantis can, in fact, mass-produce microchips and form-mold plastics, among other things, if not nearly at the rate that the Chinese factories from which the equipment had been seized once could.

"It depends," Rodney says, because it does. They've had a Materials group (aka Team Flubber) working on new raw stuffs for everything from backpacks to guns to parts for the _Daedalus_. But, especially with anything mechanical, sourcing is still a problem and half the time they end up building a prototype with one set of materials and the final release with another. Especially with military equipment, which has additional conditions to be met, ones that frequently don't become obvious until they're being field-tested. The marines have the ability to break anything -- it's their mutant power -- but since they are the customer, Science is learning to make things 'marine proof.' Or 'ruggedized,' as the Little Tripoli people put it.

"That's not really a helpful answer," Sheppard says and Rodney rolls his eyes because Sheppard knows that it wasn't a helpful question.

"We are having a chicken and egg problem," Radek pipes up. "Which comes first -- the strategy or the equipment? I think we would all work better if you decided what you wanted to do and then we worked to fit your needs instead of what we are doing now. Which is mostly waiting for the other side to make up its mind."

It's an oversimplification of the problem, but it's not entirely wrong. Rodney knows that Little Tripoli is trying to overhaul the hows and whats of warfare to be best able to handle the inevitable Ori invasion of Pegasus. He cannot understand the concepts or the arguments for and against various theories and theses, but he does understand that Sheppard and his people are trying to leapfrog over everything they thought they knew, everything that they'd been trained to do, which is also everything that failed to work against the Ori back home.

"We can't fight a war with a wishlist, Doc," Lorne says with a grimace.

 

_...tbc_


	2. Life on Mars

* * *

  
The first refugees come from Galar.

"Not the planet we would have picked if we were making a list of worlds most likely to benefit from our blood and treasure," Colonel Mitchell says with a shrug when he briefs Elizabeth. "But the Ori are making stranger bedfellows. They work hard, though, and they can use our toys with only a little training."

The Galarans become lab assistants, nurse practitioners, cooks, and tailors.

Rodney, to Elizabeth's surprise, treats the arrivals to his departments as gifts and not burdens. "It's like having grad students," he explains cheerfully over a working lunch, seemingly the only kind they ever have any more. "They can handle the basic stuff, which allows everyone else to focus on the more complex projects. When they've done enough servitude, we can pat them on the back, give them a poofy hat, and then dump three times the work on them and expect it done in half the time."

The Galarans in the kitchens and laundries are those whose most meaningful skill before Atlantis had been survival; not everyone came from the academies or the hospitals. Some Atlantis's new residents used to be artists and teachers and civil servants and Elizabeth is still trying to figure out how to accommodate their backgrounds with Atlantis's needs. She may be trying too hard -- Carson tells her that they cannot sacrifice the morale of the many to accomodate the possibly bruised dignity of a few and Yoni Safir pointedly reminds her that the situation is not unique to Atlantis, that the surplus of Russian émigrés in Israel could mean concert violinists turn into bus drivers and nuclear physicists become plumbers in order to have a place in a free society.

" _We_ have physicists as plumbers," Rodney says. "And triple doctorates as pit crew for the jumpers. This is a sanctuary, not Paradise Island."

"At least we let them live in the city," John says, not looking up from his french fries. "We make the Pegasus refugees stay in the backyard."

Nobody has anything to say to that.

Elizabeth is grateful that Teyla is not at the lunch and horrified that she feels that way. She schedules a meeting with Teyla for that afternoon, seeking both advice and absolution -- have they really been so blindly _colonialist_ in their choices? Teyla assures her that nobody has been offended, that the people of this galaxy are grateful for Atlantis's generosity and, if anything, must accustom themselves to even the notion of another society offering protection from the Wraith. If the people from Earth's galaxy are ignorant of the Wraith and unable to subsist on their own, then it would be cruel to force them to do so anyway just to avoid the impression of favoritism.

It is the answer Elizabeth wants to hear -- that Teyla has not been seething privately -- but not for the right reasons.

When the next group of refugees arrive, Elizabeth welcomes them, feeds them, and gently explains that while they will be given time to adjust and recover, everyone must eventually find a place either within the city work force or out on the mainland. Not everyone is from planets as advanced as Galar; Atlantis suddenly has a trade labor force and unskilled workers when the joke used to be that "unskilled" meant anyone without a doctorate.

Economics has taken the same kind of existential beating that every other discipline has suffered and Atlantis isn't prepared for such a shift in demographics -- there used to be either scientists or military and now they've got half a dozen strata where there used to be just two. Their simple economy, subsidized by Earth, is no longer simple and no longer subsidized. There isn't a lot of griping about allocation of resources or social status because the shock of war is still immediate, but this accommodation will not last forever.

Elizabeth spends hours caucusing with the social scientists, trying to come up with a rule set that can guide them in this uncertain present and unknown future. And then trying again after the military contingent pokes holes in their trial balloons, repeating over and over that Atlantis cannot expand past the point the marines can effectively protect them.

As frustrating as these sessions are, as much as Elizabeth would like to say that John and Lorne and the captains are being too conservative and too unwilling to think creatively in a situation where the only solutions exist outside of the box, she can't simplify like that. Atlantis is not just a sanctuary from the Ori -- they are also a target of the Wraith. Who are not inclined to give Atlantis a break to reorganize and who cannot, under any circumstance, learn that they are importing people from the Milky Way. It won't be a secret they can keep forever -- the Genii picked up soon enough when they got back in contact with Earth the first time -- but it is one that they must necessarily keep for as long as possible.

M9J-442 doesn't look like much at first -- the marines call it Mars because of the reddish dusty dirt -- but it grows into something that looks more promising than a shanty town. Which is essentially what it is, although Elizabeth eventually stops being so ashamed of it as Teyla's pride grows in the project she is helping supervise.

Beyond the dry plains by the stargate, there are grassy fields that Botany assures them will produce good crops once cultivated and ample supplies of fresh water and hardwood and near-deer. The farming will take time to develop, but pre-fab housing -- shipped to Pegasus years ago for reasons nobody ever learned -- and the quickly-rising wood-and-mud buildings allow them to move people out to settle the place right away.

Initially, the only people on Mars are the ones responsible for developing it -- laborers and engineers -- and the marines who serve as police and protectors beyond that afforded by the jury-rigged shield over the stargate. But then Life Sciences asks for permission to base an outpost there so that they can do the sort of long-term studies that are impossible with the marine-escorted day trips they're used to. And then Engineering wants to build one as well, something about needing workspace away from Atlantis's energy fields -- Elizabeth couldn't even follow Radek's dumbed-down explanation. And soon the civil engineers are re-designing the irrigation and sewage plans to accommodate a larger permanent and commuter population.

"We've gone and done what NASA couldn't," John announces as he walks into her office one afternoon. "We've settled Mars."

* * *


	3. A for Alpha

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alpha Company had become the byword for "something that will never happen" because the SGC had decided that Atlantis didn't need the full complement of marines assigned. But once the Ori come it stops being a joke and so Atlantis stops waiting for the punchline.

The call from the control room came at 0345, a shocked Lieutenant Paik telling him that they had an incoming wormhole from the Milky Way with a valid IDC and refugees. By the time John makes it down there five minutes later, the gate room is full of scientists, piles of equipment crates, and -- perhaps most importantly -- marines.

Not all of the marines are in good working order, however, but Paik has apparently called down to Medical and there are doctors and gurneys pushing their way in from the north doorway. A marine covered in dirt and blood maneuvers his way past the crates and dumbstruck civilians to John.

"Alpha Company, First Atlantis Battalion, reporting for duty, sir," he says, saluting. "I'm Captain Armstrong, sir. I don't know if you remember me."

John returns the salute. He had met Ryan Armstrong a few times, back at the SGC when they were still trying to get the battalion stood up. But that was almost three years ago and the man in front of him doesn't look much like the squared-away marine in a service uniform John only vaguely remembers.

"This isn't how we wanted to get Alpha Company," he says, extending a hand to Armstrong, who shakes it. "But welcome aboard."

"Thank you sir," Armstrong replies with a complicated expression. "Frankly, I'm a little surprised we made it. Just let us know where we'll be bivouacking, we'll drop off our gear, and we're ready where you need us."

John chuffs a sad laugh as he looks around for either Lorne or Elizabeth, preferably both. He doesn't want to have to deal with all of the civilians and gear by himself. "Stand down, Captain. It's oh-dark-thirty here and all we're going to do tonight is get everyone fed and quartered. How many marines did you bring?"

"Eighty-five, sir," Armstrong replies, obviously relieved. John doesn't know what kind of a fight it took to get this group to a stargate, let alone one that could dial Pegasus, but it was clearly a major one. "Plus two corpsmen. We've got forty-one civilians from Earth, three from Orban. We started out with more of everyone, I'm afraid, but getting to the gate was harder than we'd anticipated."

John nods. "You did well," he says, meaning it. He doesn't know what the original numbers were, but there's no sense of defeat here, even among the wounded and scared.

"Colonel?" John looks up toward Elizabeth's voice. She's moving through the control room toward the top of the steps, apparently having stopped off in her office first. _She_ doesn't look like she was woken up at four in the morning.

He waits for her to descend, then introduces her to Armstrong. The guy's exhausted and this'll save him one iteration of his story. Elizabeth greets him with due solemnity and then starts asking the practical questions -- how, who, what, why. The how turns out to be blind luck -- an experimental energy source that turned out to actually work.

"Most of the civilians were part of Colonel Carter's tech groups, ma'am," Armstrong explains. "They're doing real high level work. We'd been hiding them on Kheb, but the Ori found us. Didn't even land -- just started bombing from upper atmo."

The urgent cases have been whisked off to Medical and the walking wounded are being herded toward the door, so the gate room is starting to thin out to merely 'very overcrowded' from 'mosh pit.' John finds Lorne in the sea of humanity and gestures for him to join them.

"So you dialed _Atlantis_?" Elizabeth asks, surprised. "That's quite a leap of faith in your charges, captain."

John's surprised, too -- desperate times call for desperate measures and he has survived more than his own fair share of long shots, but he's curious why Armstrong would try for a Hail Mary pass when a simple handoff to another planet would do. Getting to the stargate in the first place was obviously the bigger problem.

Armstrong grimaces, then looks behind him. The only other person in proximity is Lorne, who joins them with a nod.

"I had a standing order that the scientists weren't to fall into Ori hands, ma'am," he says, waiting for the realization to hit Elizabeth's face. When it does, he gives her a sad shrug. "That doohickey of theirs was nowhere near ready for testing. I owed it to them and to my marines to let them try to beat the odds. And they did."

John looks at Lorne, who grimaces back. Neither of them is shocked. Nor, for that matter, is Elizabeth and John feels worse for that than his own unfazed reaction.

"Well, then, Captain, I'm all the more glad you're here," she tells Armstrong seriously.

There's a clatter by the stargate and they all look over, but whatever it was has been resolved without incident. The uninjured civilians are sitting on the crates, waiting to be packed away like their equipment while the marines stand uneasily at rest.

"I'm also going to suggest that we leave any other discussions until the morning, when everyone is rested and comfortable," Elizabeth goes on. John suspects that Armstrong and maybe his lieutenants are the only ones who know about the SGC's order, about how close they'd come to having to kill their own people. The debriefs in the morning are going to be complicated. "Colonel, Major, I assume there's room in Little Tripoli to accommodate our newest citizens?"

"Rooms'll be a little dusty, ma'am, but we can get everyone racked out right away," Lorne replies.

The barracks have entire floors that are unoccupied, which is usually a recipe for mischief among the leathernecks. John knows that Polito is floating around somewhere and he'll probably have marines swabbing decks already.

"Very good," Elizabeth says with a small smile. "Captain, why don't you introduce me to a few of the scientists so that we can do them the same favor and then I'll let you take care of your marines."

Armstrong leads Elizabeth off and John turns to Lorne.

"Hell of a thing," Lorne says, shaking his head. John wonders if he's thinking about when they got Reletti back. He nods in agreement.

McKay and Zelenka have both been woken up and are already talking to the scientists and directing marines -- not the new ones -- to bring the crates down to Engineering's domain. The crash of another dropped crate draws everyone's attention.

"If that energy thing of theirs works," Lorne begins, then trails off. He doesn't need to finish the thought aloud. If it works, then it could mean so many things. It could maybe even turn the tide against the Ori -- or against the Wraith. It could allow them to better protect Atlantis or it could even allow them to help free Earth. But John hasn't spent the last few years around Rodney and not picked up on how just because something beat the odds to work once doesn't mean that it'll work again.

"Yeah." He comes down the last two steps and pats Lorne on the shoulder as he moves past him. "C'mon. Let's go put our boys to bed. We've got a long day tomorrow."


	4. Absit Omen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Not how AJ'd planned on doing things.

When he'd imagined his commissioning ceremony, AJ had figured on it being a sunny day with his family and some friends watching his mom pin on his butterbars and him accept the officer's mameluke to wear instead of the NCO's sword he'd worked so hard to earn.  
  
What he got was something a lot closer to when he'd gotten promoted to staff sergeant since it took place in Atlantis, except not really because there was nothing very celebratory about this battlefield commission. Not when Atlantis's temporary moratorium on promotions was being lifted because too many had died to let the status quo stand. Atlantis had always been bottom-heavy, the indian-to-chief ratio much higher than anywhere else in either the Corps or the US Armed Forces, but even the Atlantis Battalion needed sufficient numbers of officers and senior NCOs to continue functioning at some semblance of normal. They'd been letting platoon sergeants hold commands after the deaths of lieutenants, but they were starting to lose gunnery sergeants too, and the center was starting to give.  
  
AJ hadn't really considered himself on the short list for a promotion -- he had added his rocker just before leaving Atlantis for Earth, which even now still made him low on the E-6 totem pole. Which in turn meant that, if anything, he was looking at assuming leadership of the team and maybe the squad if and when Ortilla got bumped up to gunny. It hadn't crossed his mind that they'd be looking at making new lieutenants; the announcement had spoken only about filling spaces within the ranks.  
  
Which was why, when he was told, it was something close to an ambush.  
  
He'd been in one of the barracks rec rooms when he was told to report to Major Lorne's office and he'd taken the summons as relating to an upcoming mission. But instead of finding Doc and Suarez and Ortilla, he'd shown up to find every officer ranked captain and above sitting around the conference table.  
  
"Take a seat, Staff Sergeant," Sheppard said, gesturing to the empty chair next to Captain Hanzis.  
  
AJ did, feeling like he was in the dock at a court martial even though there was no edge of anger in the room. Even though Captain Polito gave him a grim smile that had nothing of disappointment in it.  
  
The spiel was short and to the point: everyone understood why they needed to create new platoon sergeants. But that wasn't going to be enough and so AJ, by virtue of his time on the Major's team and SG-3 and Recon and then his decision to pursue his commission, was their choice to bolster the too-thin officer ranks.  
  
"It's going to be a rough transition no matter what," Sheppard said, sounding almost apologetic. "But it's going to be least rough on you. You were already leaning that way and you've had the most experience acting in the roles we need even our most junior officers to fill."  
  
AJ wanted to protest, but he knew that they were essentially right. It would've been false modesty to say that the last couple of years hadn't been excellent preparation, probably far more practical training than the ROTC courses he'd once been planning to take. He knew he could handle the political part -- which in a time of war really boiled down to being able to shout loud and make decisions -- but he also knew that he'd be torn away from his friends and his platoon, which was the closest thing he had to a family now that his mom and sisters were so far out of reach. He couldn't say that, after leaving Atlantis to go mustang, he didn't want to do his duty because he was afraid of being  _lonely_.  
  
"Your time away changed you," Lorne would tell him later. "You've been grateful for the familiar things when everything else has gone to hell and that's probably kept you from noticing it too much. But the fact is that you've outgrown the place you left when you went back to Earth. You had outgrown it before you were gone -- you were ready to go. And I can already see where you're chafing at trying to fit back into that spot. It's not just that we need this from you, but also that you'll need it for yourself."  
  
He went back to his room in the barracks and started to pack; officers didn't quarter with the enlisted and he'd already been issued new digs. It was the middle of the day and he was grateful; it meant fewer marines he'd run into -- including members of his own future platoon. Ortilla and Suarez found him anyway and brought beer and they had a mini-wake for their team; Manny was pretty much a shoo-in for one of the open gunny slots and Chris would be moved to one of the gaping holes in any of several platoons. They didn't know if this would be the official end of their running around with the Major and Doc -- "Don't want you along if you're gonna be a fucking lieutenant," Chris muttered -- but there weren't that many missions anymore anyway. The days of wandering around the galaxy looking for new peoples and technology were long gone. Most of the time when they went off-world, it was with their platoon and with permission to fire as soon as they stepped through the wormhole.  
  
The actual commissioning was done at the same time the other staff sergeants were getting bumped up to gunnery sergeants despite AJ's hope to not do it publicly; Captain Polito joked to him that going from E-6 to O-2 only  _felt_  like a demotion.


End file.
